After Mourning: Notes On The End Of Beauty And The Moving Image

Abstract

This text explores the expulsion of beauty and sublimity from
contemporary art, marked by the postmodern disillusionment brought about by the
art system and market. In this context, works such as Sam Taylor-Johnson’s Still
Life are discussed, reflecting the transience and melancholy of a possible “end of
art.” Drawing on theorists like Baudrillard and Panofsky, the text questions the loss
of aesthetic ideals in contemporary art, which is associated with historical traumas
and the commodification of the spectacle of horror. Subsequently, the text offers
some avenues for considering the recovery of beauty and the sublime, emphasizing
the need to reimagine an art that, —from within contingency— re-establishes the
aesthetic correlation of human beings and their place in the world. This is achieved
by articulating a perspective that transcends the mere contemplation of the ruin.
We posit these possibilities from certain artistic practices linked to avant-garde
cinema, specifically those that integrate the “poetic-mystical” (Val del Omar,
Colectivo Los Ingrávidos, etc.), movements that move outside the art market.